Kishore Singh: Labour of love

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"I don't like to complain," hissed my wife, "least of all about my own flesh and blood, but you're spoiling our son with your attitude." I hadn't any idea what had set off this tirade, and didn't much care "" unless my wife has someone to persecute, she is never very happy "" but there was no escaping her barrage. "What do you think he is doing in Pune?" she asked. "Why, studying of course," I pointed out, somewhat logically, since he is in college.

My wife looked at me triumphantly. "When I called to speak to him in the afternoon, he was having lunch with Sujata," she said. "So I called him in the evening, but he said he couldn't talk because he was watching a movie with some friends. When I called at night to ask if he had eaten dinner, he said he was out with some model from Bombay." She glared at me, "Do you have anything at all to say?" "Yes," I said, "I think he is very lucky to be dating a model from Bombay."

I was hoping my wife would not speak to me after that for a few days, but she was clearly in the mind to snap, and didn't seem to mind fending off a few jibes. "I think you should concentrate at least a little on what you daughter is doing, or" "" and this I sympathised with, since she seemed to be spending remarkably little time on her studies "" "not doing." But since I could hardly be held accountable for this, I protested, "I keep insisting that she reads every day." "She reads all right," my wife sneered, "but only those silly books about romance, instead of her course books."

I reminded her that it was I, not her, who attended the parent-teacher meetings at school, in return for which she was supposed to help our daughter with her studies. "Sarla's husband," my wife griped, "still teaches his daughters, but you have only blamed me, even though," she said, "I do everything for this house."

I saw this as my opportunity to point out a few obvious flaws in her argument "" the coffee table was no longer waxed, my clothes had their buttons popping off, the shoes were rarely placed in their racks, no one seemed able to fill the decanters any more, the bookshelves didn't appear to have been dusted, the carpet could do with shampooing, and the dog hadn't been given a bath in a week. "That," my wife pointed her finger once again at me, "is all because of you."

This I thought unfair "" after all, we had decided long ago that I was to handle all the work outside the house, while she would tackle whatever was to be done inside the house. If I paid the telephone and electricity bills, she was to supervise the servants at home. But she had twisted the arrangement in recent times. "Shopping for groceries," she said, "is an outside job." "You have servants in the house to manage them," I said. "But the moment they step out, it's outside work," she insisted.

It transpired that cleaning the windows and polishing the windows was man's work (so mine), I had got the dog without her permission (so I must walk it, take it to the vet, and bathe it), and since the servants were busy running errands for her, I had no right to criticise any leftover work in the house, unless I undertook to do it myself.

I bent to the task "" cleaning is exhausting work "" and when it was all done, my wife, wanting to be taken out, asked, "What would you rather be doing?" "I would," I snapped back at her, "rather be dating a model from Bombay."